


The Toymaker's Daughter

by Leni Jess (Leni_Jess)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: hp_springsmut, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-03
Updated: 2011-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-23 09:50:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leni_Jess/pseuds/Leni%20Jess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sadder and a wiser Tonks after she survives the Battle of Hogwarts? No way. Back into the lists of love she goes ... with a bit more forethought than last time, but an even more awkward target.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Toymaker's Daughter

**Author's Note:**

> AU from ~~all~~ some of those deaths at the end of DH; they've been undone.
> 
> Just so the title doesn't bug you – in the 18th century Birmingham toymakers made "toys" (duh). "Birmingham toys" were not dolls or trains or spinning tops, but small more-or-less useful objects, including anything for which the patterns used changed frequently: boxes, buttons, buckles, bracelets, seals (most of what we now call jewellery), clocks, watches, specialised tools, and you-name-its.

Tonks knew that saying about getting straight back on your broom after you'd fallen off.

A humiliation-laden courtship – not that she set a lot of store by having pink hair, but it had been disturbing not being able to do it; it was more disturbing to remember that she'd crept about like a wet mouse. A marriage, contracted in haste because she'd been careless (she really hadn't meant to get pregnant; clumsiness wasn't just physical, apparently). The baby. The baby was a good thing (and what were the odds against a metamorphmagus breeding true?), but the husband... In principle she had no objections to a werewolf (obviously; she'd fancied this one hard enough), but she did object to one who kept running away from his responsibilities. In particular she objected to one who was at bottom gay (oh god, clumsiness evidently extended to metaphor, too), and apparently felt a strong bond with that not-a-werewolf Bill Weasley (and let Fleur Weasley deal with the fall-out from that; it would serve Remus right if Fleur liked threesomes).

It was also humiliating to think that Severus Snape had been right when he'd criticised her changed Patronus. He must have been very alive to what a Patronus could say about one's most private life, and no wonder no one, except maybe Dumbledore, had ever seen his.

She'd known Remus was reluctant, but she hadn't known why. His reasons had seemed so trivial, given that she'd loved him – too old, too dangerous – pfft. Being dead for a while had got some solider reasons out of him, at last, as well as a clear statement that he didn't love her.

So, all right. Kiss her marriage goodbye, and get back on that broom. It had been a long fall, and she hadn't even known she was falling, but her feet were on the ground now, and she would get on that broom, get back in control of her life. Just as soon as the Healers let her out of St Mungo's, even if they never admitted they were poking and prodding her (and Remus) to satisfy their own morbid curiosity, not because there was anything wrong with either of them.

She and Teddy could always go home to mother, and no doubt Remus would be happy to have visitation rights in place of marital rites. Teddy might give her mother something she was happy to do, moping as she was after Dad. At least her poor mum wasn't in mourning for the lot of them.

Tonks was very grateful to her mother for wanting to take care of Teddy. It meant she could get back into Auror harness, get back to the familiar, to a job she knew how to do, and knew she did well. Feel confident about something.

In the end she discharged herself from St Mungo's, over the Healers' protests, and marched straight over to the Ministry and into the Auror Division. They had a new boss, of course. Too many people, everywhere, had been too willing to let Voldemort have his way, even if they hadn't actually taken the Mark, or had been incapable of fighting the Imperius Curse. That was forgivable in people like Madam Rosmerta, but unacceptable in an Auror, who was supposed to catch Dark wizards, not to submit to them.

Luckily, she'd always got on with Jenny Hale, the new division head.

Jenny looked her up and down. "So the Healers have passed you fit?"

Tonks offered the parchment she had screwed out of Augustus Pye. Jenny read it carefully.

"You had the baby more than three months ago, so if you're fit, and willing, you can start back as soon as you like. Once Micky Herbert also passes you as fit."

Tonks didn't frown at that; she had known she'd have to get back into shape. The old Auror mightn't be totally fit for chasing Dark wizards any more, but he could certainly test the physical well-being of any of the younger Aurors without getting out of breath.

"I'll make an appointment with him," Tonks agreed. "I want to get back into training as soon as I can."

"There's enough to do, and not enough of us to do it, thanks to –" Jenny pulled herself up.

"Thanks to Voldemort," Tonks said flatly, "and to too many Ministry people with wet noodles for spines."

Jenny sighed. "And a few other things. But Kingsley's cleaning house steadily." She managed a little smirk. "It's not being easy, but it is good to know that we've an honest and capable Minister – and one who was a good Auror, too. All right, Tonks, off to Micky with you. Attend the briefing Monday at ten – I'm having them every week, in shifts, for all staff. I'm making sure all my people are up to date on how we're going with leftover Death Eaters and anyone else who wants to make the most of our troubles – and reminding people of the new Minister's policies."

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Andromeda Tonks asked her daughter, in tones so mild that Tonks felt alarm, "Just what are you planning, Nymphadora?"

Tonks hated open-ended questions like that.

"I told you I wanted to go back to work, Mum, and you said you'd be happy to look after Teddy for me. If you've changed your mind..." See if she could put her mum on the back foot.

Andromeda didn't permit that diversion. "About that husband of yours."

She could answer that, so long as her mother didn't ask her how she felt about it.

"A good thing we nipped off to get married in a Muggle registry office, both being half-bloods and not fixated on doing things the wizarding way. If we had, divorce would be out, O U T. I can just see the Wizengamot agreeing to dissolve the marriage."

"And how do you go about getting that Muggle divorce?"

Her mother might well not know. Neither had Tonks, once, but that spell in St Mungo's had given her time to look into it, once she'd understood that Remus had never been hers, and never could be.

She said airily, "Muggle law is pretty clear. Just wait a couple of years, agree on what to do about children and property, fill in a few bits of paper, meet in court, and away you go: no more husband, and a reasonable agreement about Teddy."

"Ah. No chance Remus would get custody?"

No way Tonks was trusting Remus with Teddy for more than a weekend. That might be unfair – Remus did love him, and was quite handy with him, too. He had no hang-ups about changing nappies, not even doing it the Muggle way, but as Teddy grew older and more demanding Remus might just find looking after him properly a bit too stressful. Better a clumsy mum than a runaway dad. Best of all an experienced gran.

"Not as far as I can make out, unless he pressed hard for joint custody. He says he won't. But he does want to see Teddy, and I want Teddy to know his dad. So he'll get to visit, and to have Teddy to stay, and stuff like that."

"That's better than you might get in the wizarding world."

"Come on, Mum, the poor bugger's a werewolf. What rights would he get? And I have a steady job, a home with you, an experienced baby-sitter who's already brought up one metamorphmagus, and an Order of Merlin, third class – even if he has one of those too. If I'd been married to a pure-blood, yes, it might be harder. But I wasn't."

Andromeda nodded, and closed the subject with a gracious, and ominous, "I'm sure you'll make a more careful choice next time, dear. There's no hurry, after all – you've already done your duty, having one child."

Tonks wasn't touching that with a bargepole. She had no intention of living without sex for ever, and probably she'd want a man to live with, too, eventually. Just not yet. And the sex could wait. She was going to look around before making up her mind. Be a bit surer – a lot surer – that she was welcome. Then see where it went.

The man she had kept thinking about, those last few weeks in St Mungo's, really wouldn't do, if she wanted her mum to be happy with her choice. Yes, he was faithful (depressingly so), loyal (to the point of idiocy), horribly intelligent, suicidally brave, and honest (especially if it allowed him to voice his rage and bitterness), though he couldn't be relied on not to bite. She still liked older men, and didn't care for pretty-boy looks. But maybe he could tell her what she wanted to know, as the Healers and Remus couldn't. Maybe he could give her something she wanted – if there was anything he wanted of her. That was a depressing thought indeed.

Now that Tonks was back at work, she couldn't drop in on his ward – down the corridor from hers – whenever she felt like it, for two minutes, if he was likely to get in a strop; for ten, to gripe about the Healers; or for an hour, if they could talk and exchange opinions and experiences. Sometimes he was willing to do that, though she suspected he called it weak.

She could, however, set herself a schedule, and keep to it, so that he had the security of knowing that she had not left and forgotten him, just as a few others did, after the initial trickle of embarrassed apologies from Order members and former teaching colleagues. Keeping Severus Snape company while he recovered from the indignities of near-death was not lightly or easily done, after all. However, Minerva kept coming, as did Giovanna Sinistra, who was, of course, a Slytherin, and could probably use his help with her new House responsibilities. Even Harry managed to brave the serpent in his nest, since he, if not Severus, seemed to have been able to let hostilities drop.

The night before she was returned to active duty, as distinct from re-training as an Auror and re-orientation as a Ministry employee, she went to St Mungo's again, with two small boxes in her robes' pocket.

He glared at her when she entered, very mildly, for him, and she was pleased.

"Good evening, Severus."

"I cannot imagine how I might know, shut in this ... _store cupboard_. Nymphadora."

He would call her that, and she had given up trying to stop him. Just as Remus had done, and as she had done with him: that recollection gave her a twinge. This was different, she assured herself stoutly; no one hassled Severus Snape without penalty. He was no mild-mannered imitation rabbit, to be penned against his will, because he dared not show the wolf's face. She wouldn't wear this man down; he would say yes only if he willed it.

"Then these might improve your understanding." She set the boxes on the neat bedding drawn across his chest where he half-sat, half-lay, on his bed.

They bore the Honeyduke's emblem, so to any but a man of his suspicious nature they held no secrets and no terrors. Severus took his wand from beneath his pillow – he had had that back, in spite of the Healers' reservations, in hours rather than days after he had recovered enough from the venom to speak. Ostentatiously, aloud, he recited several revelatory charms, and checked her gifts for hexes and traps. She watched, unoffended.

Once he could relax and enjoy, he slipped his wand away again and ran his thumb around three sides of the lid of one box, as one unsealed any Honeyduke's container, and eased up the lid. She saw his surprise and his pleasure naked, for a moment. It was sufficient reward for placing the owl order and paying what one paid for Honeyduke's pralines – chocolates filled with crushed nuts cooked with sugar or honey, each made in the shape of the nut used. Almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios, chestnuts, even macadamias.

He touched one, a chestnut praline, she saw, with a delicate fingertip, before he looked up, his face gone blank again, and said, "That is a generous gift indeed."

In other words, What do you want?

She gave him her cheeky, confident grin. "I'm courting you, Severus."

She saw him automatically discount that, but he relaxed, and even smirked faintly.

"No use giving you flowers: you'd see them as potions ingredients. Any book I might find that you'd care for, you'll already have, or have read. But chocolate – not the plain stuff for magical shock, but the good stuff – I thought you might enjoy chocolates."

"I do," he agreed, and held the box out to her self-sacrificingly.

Someone had pounded party manners into him, though you'd never think it, most days.

She shook her head. "I've only just passed fit; I'd better stay off even Honeyduke's finest. They're for you. Try one."

He did, the chestnut, and clearly relished it.

"Those are small boxes," she advised, "so that you can spell-lock them away in your personal drawer, and not have any passing Healer sniff them out and help himself."

It was true that St Mungo's allocated very little space for the security of valuables.

Severus pushed himself upright and opened the top drawer on his side of the bedstand with a snap of his fingers, sliding in the unopened box and, after a hesitation, the one he had sampled, on top of the few letters and a book.

"Thank you, Nymphadora," he said at last. He smirked again. "You have my leave to court me, if you bring me courtship gifts like those."

The bugger thought he would frighten her off by shamming taking her seriously. Ha. Not likely.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

A couple of weeks later Severus Snape was let out of St Mungo's, having at last tried the Healers' patience too far, rather than because he was fully recovered. He could walk, and talk, and do magic: that was enough to keep their sense of duty under control.

He took himself off to Spinners End, having nowhere else he cared to go. His first morning there found an owl at the kitchen window, bearing something large but apparently light, wrapped in handmade paper with flowers embedded in it. He let the owl in, gave it a couple of pieces of bacon, lacking owl treats, and subjected the parcel to stringent testing before he touched it. The owl watched with an appearance of disdain, before it gave up on him and took an interest in the rest of his breakfast plate.

Severus peeled the paper back carefully, from – a wreath of flowers. Red and white roses, twined together, white poppies, and white morning glories, all twined into a ring of ash twigs, complete with their drifts of winged seeds.

There was a bit of a mixed message there, but clearly a message, as underlined by those winged seeds. He hadn't read that white morning glories had a special meaning, but morning glories meant love in vain. And white poppies meant dreams. Roses could have many meanings, but red and white together signified unity. Whoever sent this, expected their hopes to be dashed, he supposed, which was the first sign of sense he had seen. There was no card or roll of parchment with the flowers. Well. The roses and poppies would be useful, and the out-of-season ash keys (since it was only late summer) might be worth investigating. He would deal with it later, but in the meantime... He carried the wreath into his sitting room – his book room – and hung it where he could see it from his arm chair, flicking his wand at it with an Everfresh charm, one that provided water, rather than preserved the flowers, which might affect their use as ingredients.

He spent most of the day sorting out the personal and professional belongings Minerva had had sent from Hogwarts when he refused to return to teaching, but several times returned to the sitting room with a cup of tea to look at his wreath of flowers, and to reflect that someone wished him well. It was probable that he had misinterpreted the intended meaning of the wreath as a whole: no one would have either the impertinence or the hardihood to send him a message of hopeful but not aggressive love. Or they might be working from different dictionaries. Whatever, it made a pleasant focus for his eyes while he rested, as he had to, though not as often as he had feared.

He didn’t think of Nymphadora once, until he found among his baggage from hospital a Honeyduke's box filled with candied white violets. The dictionary of flower meanings must have been on his mind; he automatically recalled, "Let us take a chance on happiness," and snorted. Perhaps when he'd shelved his books he'd see if there was more than one dictionary, and try to sort out the meaning of the wreath. Nymphadora certainly wasn't asking for his love, even if she no longer wanted Lupin's. As who would. A coward, even when some miracle of magic had given him back his life. He'd probably squander it again, though the girl would have more sense, he hoped.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Tonks, meanwhile, had drawn on the credit she had as a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and asked to see the Minister. Kingsley's secretary had come after her before she was halfway towards the lift, saying that the Minister had a short time free. Tonks didn't quibble, but turned back at once.

When she had taken a seat at Kingsley's invitation she looked at him – as she had done on each of his several visits to St Mungo's, where she gathered he had called in on all the Order members recovering there – and saw that he was calmer and less stressed than when he had been Auror, Order member, and the Muggle Prime Minister's liaison and secretary. Nice to have just one job, however demanding. She felt like that herself, thanks to her mother's care of Teddy. If she'd been trying to raise her son by herself as well as earn a living, she'd have been run off her feet.

"You look as if this agrees with you," she began.

"Peace agrees with me, no matter how many problems it's not overcome. What can I do for you, Tonks?"

He was no longer her supervisor, but he had usually been helpful, though never soft with her. She was grateful for that: softness got you killed. Just as running after Remus into a war zone had got her killed, with no benefit to him.

"I want to talk to Severus Snape. Oh, I saw quite a bit of him in hospital. I was bored, and he must have been too; he'd put up with me for a while, and talk. But ... He wouldn't talk about what I wanted to know."

A lifted eyebrow encouraged her, but no helpful offers issued from Kingsley's firm, full lips. No doubt his new job had taught him, if he hadn't known already, not to make promises whose cost he couldn't estimate.

"I don't remember being dead, though Remus muttered about white lights, and flinched a bit every time someone brought it up, and hated it when Harry said anything about meeting him, along with his mum and dad and Sirius in that walk he took towards Voldemort. Some heavy magic there, to bring us back, and we didn't do it. It's not as if there were more than a couple of other – resurrections."

"Perhaps," Kingsley suggested, "you did it for each other."

Tonks shook her head. "He didn't and doesn't love me, and I was thinking of getting us both out alive, not of dying to protect him. Not the way Lily Potter did for Harry – and it's not as if that's a common magic, is it? There was a lot of weird magic around Harry that day – not that I saw any of it, but enough people told me about it. Perhaps we got the benefit of the overflow.

"Severus Snape managed to come back to life too. He isn't saying how, exactly, of course. According to Harry, he rolled his eyes and implied that it was perfectly obvious that he'd take precautions against Nagini's bite and venom, and of course that his precautions were adequate. He wouldn't talk to me about it at all, saying – you know that despising way he has – that I was a very second-rate Potions student, and he'd lose me with the second sentence: why should he waste his time talking?

"But... I'd like to pin down what happened, and it seems to me Severus is likelier than most people to be able to work it out, given how much obscure magic – not just Dark Arts stuff – he knows."

"And how do you expect me to change his mind about talking to you, Tonks?"

"I don't. But you could, if you wanted, give me a chance to get close enough to him that he might get into the habit of discussing things with me. Give me a job, ask Severus to help out – goodness knows he has knowledge we could use. Give me a chance to get past his wards, because we're working together."

"That hardly changed his attitude while the war was on."

She shrugged. "He was a spy, he couldn't relax with anyone, couldn't risk exposing any weakness. And most of the Order, Kings, were pretty rotten to him. Alastor was good to me, and listened to you, but he was awful to Severus – and now we know that was quite undeserved."

Kingsley said calmly, "It was an inevitable consequence of the role he was playing."

"I know that," she answered impatiently. "It's just, things could be different, now. And it wouldn't hurt Severus, to learn that some people will give him the respect he's entitled to."

Kingsley sat back in his big padded chair and looked at his fingers. Then he said, "I should be happy to recruit Severus, who could, as you say, be most useful – though not as a spy; no one should ever ask that of him again. Certainly not as an Auror, which wouldn't suit his temperament at all. But to have him as an expert on call – Potions or Dark Arts, and just his level of magical understanding, that combination of academic excellence, sharp wits, and extraordinary experience...

"All right, Tonks, I'll think about it. I know he refused Minerva's offer of either teaching post. He says he's going to make potions on commission. But he likes having a hand in things, having a place, having secrets to keep and plots to tend. It would certainly be worth my while to have him as, perhaps, a special advisor, rather than an employee."

"He probably wouldn't want to work for the Ministry, even for you, and you treated him better than most," Tonks agreed. She grinned. "I don't suppose, even if he mellows a bit, he'll ever be matey with anyone."

"If I think of something you're both suited for – because I'm not risking losing him because he thinks I'm playing games with him – I'll let you know."

That was dismissal. She rose.

"Thanks." She didn’t say either "Kingsley" or "Minister": he could decide how to interpret his agreement to help her as well as himself.

She walked back to her office, deeply thankful that Kingsley had taken her request at face value. If Severus was ever willing to speculate about the magical causes of her return, and Remus's, she would listen with enormous interest, but that wasn't what she really wanted.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Less than a week later, Tonks found herself summoned to the Minister's office. A special assignment, the division head told her.

Tonks tidied herself up, and restrained her impulse to let her excitement and nervousness show in her appearance. Her hair was its natural brown, today, and she wore her own heart-shaped face that she despised as merely pretty, quite unsuited to an Auror. She had had it firmly drummed into her that she shouldn't play games with the perceptions of her co-workers, even if it was a natural reaction to allow her appearance to change, just as water changed. Seeing a stranger alarmed people, especially working people whose job was Dark wizards. No one wanted the jolt of surprise and worry, and she shouldn't want to be on the end of some worried Auror's wand, either, Alastor Moody had testily informed her in her first year with him. He and Kingsley had taught her a lot of practical things that hadn't come up in her three years of studying spells and laws and duelling and office procedure, and shadowing Aurors in the field.

Kingsley was alone, and for a moment she thought this interview might have nothing to do with Severus Snape. Except that Auror assignments were normally handled through the division head, and Jenny Hale would be very irate to find the Minister infringing on her territory.

He nodded her to a seat, one of three set before his desk.

"I've asked you to come in early, to explain a few things to you. First, that Severus is in charge of this investigation. You are in charge of his safety. I've already discussed that with him."

She blinked. She had thought Severus could look after himself perfectly well.

Kingsley's next words echoed her thought. "There can be few wizards more capable of seeing to their own safety, but there are still Death Eaters out there, some of them both skilled and angry. By now everyone knows exactly whose side Severus was on."

Tonks asked, a little fretfully, "Do you really think everyone believes that?"

Kingsley dismissed that with a flicker of his fingers. "The wizarding world has its share of fools, and also of people who've suffered enough not to be entirely rational. Take that assignment seriously, Tonks: keep him safe. I want him to concentrate on this job. It's not inherently dangerous; you won't, I believe, be meeting any Dark wizards. But I want him to see that you're guarding him; I want him to give all his attention to what's a nasty little – or possibly not so little – problem, absence of Dark wizards or not. It's delicate, and somewhat political. You'll see. He'll be here in a minute, and so will Faranduk, to brief you both."

Faranduk sounded like a goblin name. In the postwar climate of reconciliation between magical beings, reparations owed or to be paid by various groups, not all of them witches and wizards, and rehashing of ancient history, "political" was a mild label, if the goblins were involved in this assignment.

"Yes, sir," she agreed.

Soon enough Severus was ushered in by Kingsley's secretary. He wasn't wearing his best robes, but he looked both respectable and confident. If he wasn't defensively arrayed to repel attack, he must know about this job already too, and to trust that Kingsley was in earnest in wanting, and valuing, his assistance. That was all to the good: a secure Severus was more comfortable to be with, and less likely to lay about him with his razor tongue.

Tonks found herself pouting. So what was she, a hatstand, to be the only one who didn't know what was going on? Oh, no, she was his guard. She could imagine how seriously he would take that, except as a token of Kingsley's commitment. Too bad. She had asked for this. She managed to get rid of the pout before he glanced her way.

They exchanged nods, as Kingsley said to his secretary, "Ask Master Faranduk to come in, please, George."

Master Faranduk was indeed a goblin, elderly enough, to Tonks's eyes, to have participated in the last Goblin Rebellion. Everyone exchanged formal bows, and Kingsley introduced them with strict regard for precedence before they sat down again.

Faranduk was an extremely senior member of Gringotts, and it was obvious how reluctant the goblin bank would be, not only to expose its problems to wizards, but also to ask them for help.

Faranduk paused for a moment, looking as if he had bitten into a green persimmon, then addressed himself almost exclusively to Severus, occasionally glancing at Tonks.

"Before I describe our problem, I should assure you that we of Gringotts have already set our curse-breaker wizards on it, without success, and employed wizards who can pass as Muggles to search relevant archives. Their extremely thorough investigations have given us more information, but not a way forward."

Severus bent his head, and refrained from saying anything depressing.

"While we have not abandoned hope of a resolution, our principal hope now is that Minister Shacklebolt would not waste his resources by assigning a wizard of your skills to the task merely as a gesture of goodwill."

No pressure, no, none at all. Severus must feel right at home.

Faranduk hesitated again, then launched into a preamble. "Gringotts is the only wizarding bank, and is long established, but at many periods of our past it has not been convenient for its wizarding customers to avail themselves of its services."

During the Goblin Rebellions, you mean.

"Also, until the International Confederation of Wizards passed the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy (to which goblins were not signatories), wizards used Muggle currency at least as frequently as galleons, sickles and knuts. It is only since 1692, then, that Gringotts and the wizarding world have had a mutual dependency.

"Goblins are craftsmen of great skill – artists. We are not interested in mass production. Therefore the making of wizarding coinage was a convenience, a way of assuring our place, of providing a service that would ensure we were not too unduly slighted by wand-bearers."

Faranduk remembered the Goblin Rebellions all right.

"However, as Muggles developed methods of production which ensured a high degree of consistency, it seemed good to Gringotts to examine, and then to emulate, their production methods, amended to allow for magic use, naturally. In the last part of the eighteenth century, there was a Muggle manufacturer in Birmingham who made great advances in the quality and consistency of coinage.

"It was several years," Faranduk's voice became very dry, "before his government permitted him to make copper coinage for Britain – not until 1797. More than ten years before that he established a Mint in Birmingham, where he made coins under contract for foreign governments, commemorative medals, and so on, generally highly regarded. His aim with coins was to make forgery as difficult as possible. He demanded designs that not only made coins unique, but that limited the wearing effects of use: a raised border at the edge of the flat sides, reeded narrow sides, even engraved printing around the outer edge. He then employed highly skilled die-makers, to obtain both quality and consistency. All this ensured that the coins in circulation could not be defaced, or be shaved for the pieces to be re-used in forgeries, and became much harder to imitate without employing comparably-skilled workers, and good quality machinery."

Tonks had listened to worse expositions.

"His name?" Severus enquired.

"Matthew Boulton." Unexpectedly Faranduk added, "He was a Squib, and his father before him, and his wives – sisters – were Squibs also. But he knew of the wizarding world, and eventually Gringotts' representatives dealt with him directly. He was not afraid of goblins, and he understood the requirements of secrecy. It was much easier to negotiate with him, and to learn of him, in person. Gringotts, you understand, wished then, as it wishes now, to conduct the business of coin manufacture as simply as was and is possible, provided that wizarding coinage could not readily be falsified.

"Boulton had steam engines by then, having funded and encouraged – one might say organised – the man who developed the most successful of these, so that mass production of coins was much simplified. We were of course able to copy this advance also; the steam engine eased our task, as it eased his.

"So Gringotts bought this process from Boulton – this set of processes, quite complex, as well as the engine design and the dies, which our artists transformed to hold their own designs for our coinage; it was not only a novel _idea_. Our higher-level and most skilled staff were then able to turn their minds to more interesting matters than the production of identical coins. Once one has produced one galleon, sickle or knut, however pleasing the design and the object, there is no joy or honour in producing more, yet many more were needed. Gringotts' then directors went back to Boulton several times, as his experience and understanding improved, to purchase improvements in his process and in the engines, though we developed these ourselves also. He was not a man to be cheated, nor would it have been wise, given what was at stake; they paid him fairly."

Faranduk looked very sour indeed. "Unfortunately, there was magic in that process, despite his being a Squib, and that magic is beginning to run out."

Severus moved one hand slightly, invitingly.

"We estimate that within ten years or so, all wizarding coinage made by Gringotts for Britain will – not disappear, but be reduced to its original metal. It would have value as metal – gold, silver, copper, and the other metals alloyed with them – but no worth as a medium of exchange."

Tonks thought, Ow. No wonder Kingsley was willing to help. He doesn't need the wizarding world's economy to collapse on his watch. And considering that Gringotts is _the_ bank right across Europe...

"We need a way to restore, to revive, that magical component. Or else to identify it, and reproduce it. We probably also," he continued dryly, "need to recall all existing coinage, and exchange it for new and secure, but that is a lesser problem."

Tonks wished Gringotts luck with that. How many witches and wizards would suspiciously hold on to their galleons, refusing to exchange them for something that they feared might be inferior, then scream bloody murder when they became mere lumps of gold? She supposed they could apply magic to the recall: some massive variant on _Accio_. That wasn't her problem, though it might well be Kingsley's as well as Gringotts'.

"We wish to commission you, Mr Snape, through the Minister, to look into this problem. We will provide whatever support you may come to need: financial, magical, and administrative. Also through the Minister. I would ask that your reports to him be both regular, and copied to me."

Severus glanced at Kingsley, and nodded, before he remarked, "I hope you do not want detailed and frequent reports, unless there is something useful to convey. The more time spent on such matters, the less on investigation."

"Once a week, a brief account of where your investigations have gone, what you have discovered. We would wish to be able to follow in your footsteps, should it become necessary."

That desire might just be a goblin's love of records in quintuplicate, counter-signed and rigorously updated. However, unless Faranduk were an even greater pessimist than Severus, that also sounded as if he thought there might be some interference with Severus's work. Perhaps she would be more than a hatstand after all. It occurred to her that if word of this problem had got out, there might be quite a few people – Death Eaters, Dark wizards, or just those hoping for widespread unease or even panic, down to petty criminals like Mundungus Fletcher – who would be delighted to interfere. She wasn't going to ask, but if Severus had not done so already, he would want to know how closely guarded Gringotts' little problem had been.

Faranduk gave Severus a satchel which looked as if it would only hold a few parchments, but when the goblin said it contained the information Gringotts considered should be most useful to him, she was sure its interior was wizarding space. She hoped it didn't contain every single record that the goblins' researchers had unearthed. No, of course not. At the very least it would be sorted and codified. It was probably still a lot of parchment. Then Faranduk wanted to key the satchel's lock to Severus alone.

"To Miss Tonks also," Severus said curtly. "She will be assisting me."

"Is she not merely to function as your security?"

"She can read," Severus said tartly, "and is, indeed, quite intelligent," – not something he had ever said to her – "and should, therefore, be competent to make herself useful, should a lot of reading be necessary. I shall start by going to Birmingham. Whatever happened, happened there, since Boulton lived there all his life."

So Severus had already been briefed on this, and done some research. That was lucky. To her mind, Faranduk had said little beyond, "We have a charms problem which we can't fix, and we don't know where to tell you to go to try to fix it."

After arrangements had been made on reporting and on contacting each other quickly in emergency, and Severus had received two Portkeys for the Gringotts Birmingham office, Faranduk was politely escorted out (and, no doubt, off the premises), leaving Severus looking irritatedly at Kingsley and Tonks silently observing both of them.

"You represented it fairly, Kingsley," Severus said. "I can't imagine what the then directors of Gringotts thought they were doing, to get themselves into such a pickle."

"Perhaps they thought they were dealing with a Muggle. A Squib has little power. He may, however, have knowledge. He may also have magically powerful friends – or accomplices."

"Just so," Severus agreed, unsurprised. "I think I'll need to look into his life, his home, his friends. Though even now Faranduk seems to think the man was honest with them."

Kingsley responded, "His life was productive and busy, his interests wide-ranging, his friends many – and many of them were at the heart of the Muggles' Industrial Revolution. One of them, for example (or possibly two, they quarrelled over it in print), discovered how to use a derivative of foxglove to relieve certain heart diseases, as wizards had been doing for rather longer. And Withering, at least, was purely Muggle, as was Darwin."

Kingsley's stint in the Muggle PM's office must have given him very adequate research skills for use on Muggle subjects, Tonks reflected, and he had probably been quite good at it before, to have been assigned that liaison task, and to fit in there without difficulty.

The Minister confirmed that by producing a bundle of Muggle books and a couple of bound hand-written parchments, the results of someone's research, no doubt.

"These should be of use to you, if only as background. The latest material on the man, his activities, his social and intellectual circle. And Severus..."

A raised eyebrow.

"The man died in 1809. That ten years Gringotts has left of the viability of Boulton's process may coincide with the two-hundredth anniversary of his death."

"Not mere chance, if it does," Severus agreed flatly. He tucked the books and reports away in his new satchel.

He stood. "Come, Miss Tonks. I trust you are ready for this assignment?"

Tonks wrinkled her nose at him. Yes, he was going to be her boss, but he wasn't going to be prince to her peasant.

"Having had no notice, no, Mr Snape, I am not. If you wish to go to Birmingham today, though, I can be ready within an hour of having leave to go and prepare."

"Do so. Are you staying in your mother's house?"

She nodded.

"I'll collect you from there, then. Tomorrow morning, at nine. I'll study these papers of Gringotts', and yours, Kingsley, overnight; anything immediately useful I'll owl you, Miss Tonks." Severus turned to the Minister. "I don't know that I thank you for this task, Kingsley, but it should have some interest. Thank you. I think."

"If you succeed, having Gringotts indebted to you might be useful."

"Indeed." Severus smiled like a frozen winter morning. "I shall have you indebted too, Kingsley. Thank you for accepting that."

"You have done good service, Severus," Kingsley said steadily, "and will again, I know. Thanks for taking this on."

They got themselves out of the office. At the lifts Severus detained her briefly, and gave her three of Kingsley's books. "Read these. Tonight, Miss Tonks."

"Yes."

She wondered if she would ever be Nymphadora again.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Birmingham seemed to be experiencing much pleasanter summer weather than London. The Portkey they shared took them to the front entry of the small branch of Gringotts, in an obscure little street in the Jewellery Quarter, the original manufacturing area of Birmingham.

That part of the city had been modernised by Muggles, but little of it had been razed and remade, unlike the city centre. Had Birmingham's wizarding areas been located anywhere near the Bull Ring or the Markets, its wizards would have had to make tremendous efforts to preserve them, several times, during the twentieth century alone. It was remarkable, Tonks thought, how wizards and witches almost always seemed to settle in areas which the Muggles didn't want to tear up and rebuild nearer to their hearts' desires. Probably not just a happy coincidence. Maybe some Muggles should be grateful to have wizarding neighbours; not all of them were fond of urban renewal either.

Severus introduced himself to the Gringotts manager, and sought, and was granted, a room where he and Tonks might work in private, and store the materials Faranduk had given him. They were also given a young goblin clerk on call to run errands.

Then he quizzed her about her overnight reading on eighteenth century industrial development in Birmingham (which included the discouraging information that making metal buttons, one of Boulton's products, might involve as many as seventy separate processes), on Boulton's life (long and interesting), and on the activities of his intellectual circle, the Lunar Society. (It was so called not because they considered themselves crazy, but because they met on full moon nights to have the best possible lighting for travelling home afterwards, since their meeting were usually over and after dinner at Boulton's house at Soho, two miles outside of Birmingham as it then was.) Tonks suspected that Severus might have enjoyed their company and their professional talk, ranging from medicine to astronomy and music.

He said, "They trained you well, Nymphadora."

Thank goodness. She had been wondering if this job was going to put a wall between them.

"Now, read this summary of what the researchers found. Do you want to read the curse-breakers' report too?"

"Yes," she said at once. "If there's something I don't understand, I'll ask you if I need to, yes?"

"Good. I'm going to look through the details of what the curse-breakers tried. At least one of them speculated that an innovative use of potions might be involved."

"Your field. If Boulton did have powerful magical friends, they mightn't have been in that Society of his. They kept the numbers small, always. Yesterday afternoon, Severus, I spent some time in the Lineage."

His "Ah," denoted approval. The Lineage, rather like the Hogwarts book that magically recorded the birth of magical children, listed family relationships and descent – the real relationships, not those a family might publish abroad. It also recorded the births (and deaths or banishment) of Squibs. Incendiary material at any time, and not less so now because the latest push by pure-bloods to regain control of the wizarding world had been fought off. It was, therefore, an archive to which access was fiercely guarded, and not given without due cause, even to Aurors. If Tonks had been found researching her Black ancestry without permission, she would have suffered far worse than a reprimand. In the past, some wizards had been sent to Azkaban for trying to break into the Lineage.

"Find anything interesting?"

"Matthew Boulton had no magical ancestors closer than three generations previous. His first wife and his second, like their father, were Squibs too, but their grandfather was a wizard. Boulton's daughter Anne was a witch. But his son, born a couple of years later, was not a wizard."

"That wouldn't do a lot for family harmony."

"I don't suppose so," Tonks agreed, "but that biography makes it clear that he was very fond of his daughter; they were close all his life. He was forty when she was born, after twenty or so years of marriage without a living child."

"A good enough reason to value a first child. So are there witches and wizards descended from her now, to whom we could go?"

"She never married." Severus scowled. Tonks didn't mention a failed romance with one of her father's partner's sons. "Also, she didn't go to Hogwarts – she was a bit sickly all her life, the book says; she went away to school for a year or so as a child, but apart from that she was educated at home."

"Safer, for a witch daughter of a Squib father, sickly or not, if he wouldn't send her to Hogwarts and give her a circle of magical friends and protectors. So, no help from her. What about the son's descendants?"

Tonks shook her head. "Nothing."

Severus shrugged, and they settled to their separate reading. A waste of a fine day, but that was work for you. Before they left here Tonks would have to negotiate with Severus how her post of guard was supposed to work. She could just see Severus doing as she bade him.

At midday, after a fierce argument over the relationship between guard and wizard in control of guard, Tonks swallowed down the icy knives in her throat and said as steadily as she could, "You promised Kingsley to let me keep you safe. Have you any problems with the specific precautions I have put to you?"

"No," Severus answered grudgingly. "But –"

"Then let's discuss problems that arise, before you go anywhere, but not invent them. Now, I'm going to take our baggage to the Unicorn's Cup, all right? And I'll get us something to eat. What do you want – sandwiches? Indian? Ploughman's lunch from a pub?"

"Indian. South Indian, if you can get it. And some decent beer, if you can find any."

"Lots of Indian joints around, even if not just around here, and good pubs. I looked up the _Aurors' Guide to Living Well Away from Home_ yesterday, too."

"They ought to publish that," Severus remarked, lowering his eyes to the report before him again.

"What, and have the good places crowded out?" Tonks grinned at him, easier now, and slung her linked broombags over her shoulder, levitating Severus's overnight bag.

When she came back with a brown paper bag clinking with bottles from a local brewery, and another giving off heady aromas, their errand clerk Kirrip hastened into the room ahead of her, to lay the round table in the corner with a felt pad and a damask table cloth, and set out plates and silver cutlery.

They waited until he had bobbed his head respectfully and closed the door behind him before commenting.

"This looks like pretty good silver," Tonks said, unloading the steaming containers of fish in a sweet coconut gravy, a fiercer beef vindaloo, saffron rice, naan reeking of garlic, and mixed lentil dhal onto plates, hoping to preserve the tablecloth, if possible.

Severus came over and looked, first sniffing appreciatively at the food, then picking up a fork and examining it, both sides. "The good cutlery from the manager's dining room, possibly," he agreed. "That's excellent."

"You care about the quality of the cutlery?"

"In so far as it reflects their attitude to us and our task, yes," he said dryly.

"Ah. Well, I hope you like Moghul cooking. I picked a restaurant and a pub that were close together, up on Bennett's Hill in the older part of the centre of town. The Briar Rose is a free house – Muggle of course, but I think we might like it, if you ever feel like taking an hour or so away from this job. Big, deep leather armchairs, several good beers on tap, and the volume off on the TV. I wouldn't recommend the bar in the Unicorn's Cup, going by the odd lot drinking there at lunchtime. Cigarette smoke – and other stinks – like you wouldn't believe. At least the Briar Rose forbids smoking indoors."

Severus wrinkled his nose and nodded. She could well believe that, though he could stand any amount of horrible smells in his potions workroom, he wouldn't care for a noisome atmosphere otherwise, given how sensitive a Potions Master's nose had to be.

She set the four bottles of beer on the table and opened two, pouring them into the glasses Kirrip had put out, setting a cooling charm on the two that remained.

Then she brought out a colourful envelope and laid it across his plate with a little bob of a ceremonial bow.

"A present from Birmingham?" Severus enquired. Despite the sarcasm, he sounded amused.

"Courting you, remember?"

He rolled his eyes, then slit the envelope with his table knife, withdrawing several leaflets, and smirked. "Tourist leaflets don't compare with fine chocolates, Nymphadora. You'll need to lift your game."

So he still didn't believe her. That was probably good. The closer she could get before he noticed, the better.

He lifted one eyebrow at her as he flicked through the leaflets.

"The Muggles in Birmingham have become very enthusiastic about embracing their past," she informed him. "Seeing as it's Birmingham, that's mostly industrial stuff. There's an old mill that's been used for all sorts of things. Then this Jewellery Quarter has its own museum, a little factory abandoned intact about twenty years ago, that had hardly changed its methods since the start of the century, so it might even be some sort of guide to how Boulton's workers did things. There's also a couple of quite old houses they've restored. By the pictures in the Blakesley Hall leaflet, it may have quite a decent herb garden."

"Just Muggle herbs," Severus said, but he sorted out that leaflet and had a quick look at the pictures.

"And," Tonks pursued, "Soho House. Where Matthew Boulton lived most of his adult life. And his daughter, if that's relevant."

Severus immediately dropped the leaflet for the ambitious yeoman's house and found the one for Soho House. "So it's possible to visit, in summer. We wouldn't have to slip in with a don't-notice-me charm. I wonder how much 'reconstruction' has gone on? If it's really the building Boulton lived in? No hope of picking anything up if they've torn it down, numbered the bricks, and put it back up again."

"I think they left the structure, just repaired it, cleaned it down to bare bones – got rid of dirt and old paint and so on, and the servants' wing that burned down, then redecorated the main part of the house as the original was done. They have some of the original furniture. All the plans are in that archive Faranduk's wizards went through."

"Worth a visit, then."

"On a fine day," Tonks suggested, "since the garden's supposed to be worth a look too."

"Tomorrow, perhaps," Severus agreed, pulling out her chair for her, surprising her enormously.

She managed to thank him, and started serving up rice and fish and dhal. Neither of them said anything more until the containers were empty and they were sitting back, pleasantly full, tongues and noses acutely aware of residual spice flavours.

Tonks licked her lips, then opened her second bottle of beer, enjoying its coolness and the contrasting taste.

Severus said, "According to the researchers' report, the only places associated with Boulton that are still standing are his home, and the homes of some of his Lunar Society friends."

"Yes, his Soho Manufactory was pulled down. Quite a place it must have been, a purpose-built palace full of craft workshops and steam engines, once they had them. It had noble tourists from all over Europe goggling at the cleaner end of the industrial revolution."

"Seen this?" Severus flicked his wand and a reproduction of an 18th century print of Boulton's extraordinary factory drifted over from their worktable.

"Yes, it's astonishing, isn't it. There was a print of that view in the biography. His son let the business run down – not entirely his fault, apparently, but I can't say I understood all that waffle about changes in economic circumstances in those books you gave me to go through. So the firm eventually closed, then a lot later the factory was demolished, and the land built over. But young Matthew – not so young by then, I suppose – had moved away from the district, into Oxfordshire to a fancy great house, so he can't have been paying as careful attention to the business as his dad did, who lived down the road all his life."

"In very pleasant circumstances, I would have thought, going by the photographs in this leaflet."

"Maybe by the 1820s the district was a lot grimier than when his dad started extending and fancying up the original house at Soho, back in the 1760s. Still. Slack of him. Anyway, he's not likely to matter to us."

"Whereas the daughter just might," Severus murmured. "Those reports Faranduk passed on suggested she was quite a competent witch, however unobtrusively she lived among the Muggles.

"So. Back to work."

Tonks cleared the table with a wave of her wand, looked doubtfully at a couple of curry stains on the cloth, and decided Kirrip could worry about those. They returned to wading through the mass of parchments Severus had spread over the long table.

It was near the end of the long summer's day, and Tonks was starving again, when Severus looked up and said, "We should stop, I suppose."

The torches had lit automatically more than an hour earlier; by their light she could see the lines of weariness carved in his face, and decided that part of her guard duty should be to make sure he didn't knock himself out working. There was no need to operate on a wartime basis now, but he couldn't have known anything else for many a year.

Then she remembered he was barely three weeks out of St Mungo's, and asked bluntly, "Do you need some Pepper-Up?"

He looked surprised by the question, but shook his head. "Beer will suffice. And some food. Does that pub you mentioned serve food?"

"Yes, and not just packets of crisps, though it's simple food."

"Hogwarts style, but not so lavish?"

"We can hope."

Kirrip let them out past the security trolls, and before they Apparated to their hostelry they saw the remaining lights going out.

After an hour or so in the Briar Rose, a good meal, and two pints of Guns and Briar Roses, Severus looked much better. Between the long day's work, the food and the beer, Tonks herself was quite sleepy.

She decided that courtship could wait until tomorrow.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

At mid-morning they Apparated to Soho House, Tonks having found the coordinates in one of the reports, identified as "sheltered by small trees from footpath". They just had to walk around the corner.

When they had met at the breakfast table in the Unicorn's Cup Severus had considered her hair carefully, and given an exaggerated shudder. Yesterday she had had slightly curly pink hair (since she didn't think her supervisor in the Auror Division would regard this job as being 'in the field'); today it was straight, and purple, with a lime green stripe running back from her left temple. She knew to avoid all suggestion of Lily-Evans-red. But though she played with her hair, as a young Muggle woman might, with much greater effort, she had left her face and her body in their natural state. She wanted Severus, like her colleagues, to know her, not to see a montage of meaningless images.

She had, however, put on one of her more provocative Muggle outfits: close-fitting chestnut-brown jeans and a knit silk top in the same colour, with irregular threads of lime green in it, just the colour of spring leaves on the trees. It would have been quite unremarkable, save for the large gap between the bottom of the sleeveless, wide-necked top and the waistband of her jeans at hip level, and the extremely loose weave of the silk, which suggested, but did not absolutely confirm, that she wore nothing underneath it. Tonks had decided, dressing that morning, that there was no reason she should not familiarise Severus with what he might have, if he cared to reach out. And say "please" and "thank you" at appropriate times.

Certainly none of the Muggles in the street outside the Unicorn's Cup looked at her twice; they were all rushing off to work. However, two young men idling in the alley from which they had chosen to Apparate examined her with an appreciation which they withdrew hastily when Severus scowled at them. It probably didn’t mean anything, but it made her think he had at least noticed, even if he hadn't shown it.

"Do you think I should get a navel piercing?" she asked.

Severus tapped his left forearm and said curtly, "You cannot expect me to favour body modifications."

Ow. Perhaps he needed a few more years of freedom to lighten up.

However, he said stiffly, "Your appearance is not for me to comment on, Nymphadora."

"Even if asked?"

He paused, one foot on the step of the doorway they planned to shelter in, and actually looked at her midriff and belly, flat, but with a healthy rounding to the pale gold flesh, and at the neat innie she rather liked.

"Why gild the lily?"

A compliment? Was he feeling guilty, or did he think she looked quite good? Better stop fishing.

"It's probably against regulations anyway," she said cheerfully, before they gripped forearms and disappeared.

They paused in front of the white building, its three-story rectangular block broken by a full-height bay with tall windows on the first two floors, and its two-story extension. There was a funny little bay window sticking out from the ground floor at the side, by the wrought-iron garden fence and gate; it took away from the aloof dignity of the house, and made it look more like a place someone lived in.

"Restrained ornament," Severus said. "The Muggles are looking after it very well."

"When you see the back view, you'll think that was meant to be the front: it's in a single plane, with just a little pillared porch at the entry, and flat Ionic columns going up to the roof at each end and on either side of the porch, very simple. Not a broken frontage like this."

"If he built it just down the road from the factory, he may have preferred to have the best view be from the garden, where the family would have privacy."

"Ummm," she agreed.

They had timed their arrival for just after the house opened, and found only one person behind the counter in the shop through which visitors entered the grounds. Since entry was free, Tonks waved cheerfully and drew Severus through to the exhibition area. He firmly resisted letting her look at the displays.

"None of this is relevant, Nymphadora. You're not a school-child. Come along."

They had the garden to themselves, too, and Severus smiled faintly at the little building in one back corner. Its walls were upright logs and its conical roof was thatched, but the very unrural pointed arches on the many-paned windows and door showed it to be an urban fantasy.

"The garden shed?" He was definitely amused.

"Boulton's 'hermitage' – where he went to think. He only had a study of his own, and a bedroom, and other rooms he could claim sole access to."

It turned out they could not wander the house alone, but had to be escorted. However, the young man in the rear hallway didn’t suggest they wait for more people to turn up, so it was quite helpful, in the end, to be shown around.

Although he didn't try to hurry their guide along, Severus was most interested in Matthew's ground floor study, with its displays of coins, and his bedroom upstairs, though he commented on Anne's bedroom, with its generous facilities and good views. He was perfectly willing to look at all the display material relating to the Soho Mill and the Manufactory. He was clearly personally fascinated by the ducted central heating Boulton had installed in the cellar level, with pipes running alongside the staircases, and unobtrusive outlets under the steps. Tonks thought some wizarding homes could do with that too; not everyone could manage adequate warming charms for a whole house.

When their guide went back to the head of the stairs to talk to a colleague Tonks murmured, "We should look at their bedrooms more closely. Did you sense anything?"

"I wouldn't expect to, but we must be able to search more thoroughly than is possible now. I hope," Severus added witheringly, "you don't think we should come over all psychic."

"A ghost would have to be pretty hardy to stick with the house through all the different uses it's had, and all the renovations of the last ten years."

"Anne is the only one eligible to become a ghost; the rest of the family were Squibs at best – Muggles in all but name. Very well. We'll come back after closing time. Five, isn’t it?"

"Yes. And meanwhile, what about a picnic lunch?"

"Where?" He looked at her unobtrusive backpack. "In that?"

Tonks nodded. "I went out after breakfast and got sandwiches and a flask of coffee, and put charms on both to keep them fresh. How about the garden? Or we could sneak off and look at Aston Hall. Or Blakesley Hall, that's much less lordly, and a lot older."

"Weoley Castle, oldest of all," Severus proposed. "It's closed on weekdays, and going by the leaflet, there's nothing to see but grass and shoulder-height stone walls. We should be able to Apparate in and out without trouble, and can talk after we've eaten." He lifted one shoulder to draw attention to his satchel. "I have all our notes here, and the most useful of the goblins' reports."

The tall wrought iron fence around the remains of the old moated manor, and the tangle of trees, shrubs and blackberry canes that grew inside the fence, blocked all outside views. Inside was warm and sheltered, delightfully private yet open. They walked down to the lower grassy levels where the moat had been, ignoring the informative placards, and settled down to enjoy food and fresh air and the flowering summer around them. The blackberries were kept back from the actual stone walls and footings, while the wildflowers were encouraged.

Once they'd finished eating, Tonks tossed a small foil-wrapped object at Severus.

"Courting," she reminded him. "You asked for chocolate."

He smiled at that, and unwrapped the little tile, taking a small sampling bite.

"Hazelnut fondant." He seemed to enjoy it.

When he'd finished he asked, "None for you?"

Tonks mentally crossed her fingers and said, "I thought I might like a kiss. Or two, seeing you're ahead on chocolate."

He sat bolt upright and scowled at her. She stayed in her easy slouch on the grassy slope.

"Kisses are optional, but nice. I don't tease, Severus, whatever you think."

The scowl slowly faded, and the stiffness relaxed. He looked at her as if examining some potions ingredient he'd never seen before, cataloguing all its aspects and its potential. Tonks found herself going a little pink, but met the dark eyes when they rose to hers, and saw the faint spark in them brighten to flame.

"Kisses. I'm out of practice."

"It's like falling off a broom. Anyone can do it."

Carefully he moved the backpack and satchel away, then lowered himself to the grass beside her.

He lifted up on one elbow and brought his free hand to her face, fingers stroking over her cheek, one fingertip tracing her lips, which parted on a soft breath. He seemed to be content exploring the contours of her face, but then that fingertip returned to her mouth, pressing, so delicately, but insistently. She opened her mouth for him and he touched her teeth, teased the tongue tip that came out to meet his finger, then held still as she tried to suck it into her mouth. Tonks was aware of her fast and irregular breath, of the heat building between her legs, of the texture of his hair and his scalp as she ran her fingers over his head, touching him now as he was touching her.

Then Severus bent his head and bit the finger that caressed his tongue, and smiled at her gasp. It wasn't a smile of triumph, but rather one of wondering surprise. This slow, gentle exploration, barely touching, was driving her crazy, warming her as she would never have expected from such slight contacts.

She shifted closer to him, so their bodies were aligned, and slipped her other hand behind his head, pressing him down. As his lips touched hers she closed her eyes. His mouth brushed along hers, then his tongue, and she whimpered and pressed harder, her tongue coming out to meet his and enter his mouth, exploring him, tongue, teeth, palate, trying to keep to the pace he set, though she desperately wanted more.

"Real kiss, damn you," she whispered at last, and showed him, in case he didn't know.

Maybe he didn't. He let her lead, but he learned fast, and mimicked her tongue movements, her nibbling teeth, her clinging lips. He didn't bump noses with her, but aligned their mouths so that kisses flowed one into another, with little withdrawals to catch breath, then coming back to lick and suck once more.

Tonks wrapped her arms around his shoulders and back, and tugged, so that his body no longer held itself free of hers, but came down with all his weight. He made a soft sound and tried to lift away, but she pulled sharply, wanting his weight and the feel of him along her, wanting the heat and the pressure. His belt buckle dug into the flesh of her stomach, while the soft material of his cotton trousers sensitised her bared flesh as he began to rub himself against her. It was infuriating; she wanted his body, not his clothing, pressing into her.

She managed to get a hand between their bodies and scrabbled at that buckle. After a moment he understood what she wanted, and this time she let him lift up so he could unfasten the belt and pull it out of the loops and push it aside. She could feel his hands shaking as they brushed against her.

Then he took a deep steadying breath and reared above her, supporting himself on his elbows, his hands framing her jaw.

He breathed, "If this is a courting gift, may I unwrap it?"

"Yes," she said huskily. "Do."

His hands moved under her top, pushing it aside, finding her bare breasts beneath it, cupping them, fingers flicking at her nipples, curling around them, exploring and intensifying their hardness. Then he shoved the top up and bent to take a nipple into his mouth, sucking softly, then lapping at it with his tongue, then with a harsh sound sucking hard. She arched up into him, groaning softly at the jolt of sensation from her breast to her belly.

He pulled away from her, demanding, "Did I hurt you?"

" _No_ , Severus! Do that again!"

He returned to her breast more confidently, then moved to suckle at the other. All the while his hands moved over her, breast and belly, then his fingers began tracing under the edge of her jeans, while his thumb pressed gently into her navel.

She got her hands to the fastening of his trousers and managed to get the waistband button free, then tugged at the zip tab, pulling it down far enough to get one hand in to rub over his belly and find the erection that had been pressing into her, issuing its own invitation. He groaned as deeply as she had, then gripped her wrist, halting her movement.

"No, not now, not yet," he muttered. "I know myself; I want to know you."

Cool and sober Tonks might have appreciated a man who wanted to work on her pleasure, but she wasn't pleased to have him pull her hand out of his trousers, and set it on his shoulder.

He kissed her quickly, mouth and breast and belly, then said, his voice clearer but not less warm, "I want to play with my present, Nymphadora."

If he could still say her damned name he had a long way to go.

She started working on the buttons of his shirt, and protested when he pulled back.

"In a minute. Let me get this maddening scrap off you."

Eagerly she helped him, lifting her arms, raising her shoulders from the grass, her eyelids fluttering as the silk threads slid over her face.

"Your shirt too," she demanded, so he took that off, much more quickly than she would have been able to do, and tossed it to one side.

His skin was paler than hers, even paler than the skin of his face and hands, and there was only a fine drift of hair between his chest muscles and down towards his navel, black and fine and straight. She ran a hand down it, and again he stopped her before she could follow it beneath his trousers, though he had moved involuntarily so that her hand caressed him more firmly.

She gripped his shoulders, thumbs tracing his collarbones and the hollows above them; he shuddered slightly. Then she curled and lifted so that she could take one tiny brown nipple between her teeth, playing with it until it tightened and rose. When he pushed her back she could see it had changed colour, too, flushing slightly.

Severus bent his head and began to lick at her left breast, painting a warm wet swathe across it, around, slowly circling in on the nipple, until he was tonguing her crinkled areola. A soft, desperate noise pushed between her lips, and she gripped his hair, trying to bring his mouth to the nipple itself. He let her, and alternately licked and suckled and lightly bit, until she was whimpering. Then he began to do the same with the other breast, and Tonks moaned, seizing his bony hips this time and bringing him hard against her, rubbing, opening her legs so that the place that needed his touch might have some stimulus, however inadequate.

He began to fumble at her trousers, and finally got them open, without ever ceasing to torment her breasts. Tonks lifted her hips, wriggling, trying to push her trousers down, though the weight of his body on hers made it almost impossible. He raised his hips to make it easier for her, then sat up and took hold of her waistband, pulling her jeans down, managing to get them down her thighs, over her calves, finally freeing her feet. She was vaguely thankful that she had kicked off her sandals when they settled on the soft grass to eat. She pushed her panties hastily down her legs, and finally kicked them off one foot.

Then she lay back, naked on the grass, and looked up at him.

The little pause in the constant excitement let her speak steadily enough, though her voice wanted to tremble.

"Come play, Severus."

He parted her thighs and at first simply looked at her, then began exploring her, with the same delicate care as he had initially used when touching her face and mouth. She wanted a firmer touch, but she let him find his way, tracing the wetness between her inner lips, painting it over her, spreading it, then fingering the slit between, and at last working his way to her clitoris. She wasn't sure that he'd seen one before; all his caution suggested that a woman's body was new to him and he wanted to be sure of what he was doing, but he certainly seemed to know what a clitoris was, and what might be done with it. It was already stiff, and she knew it would be flushed as well as wet with her juices, but his fingertip rubbed at it, making it stand harder and firmer, while she breathed hoarsely, mouth open, trying not to distract him by moaning as she wanted to, as each touch made her hotter, readier, brought her closer to the orgasm that had been building almost from his first contact with her breasts.

She lifted her hips, and gasped, "Don't tease, Severus. Either finish it now, or fuck me and bring me off that way."

"Not yet," he muttered, and she did moan then, despairing, not sure how she could survive more of this.

Apparently it was fucking he wanted to hold off on, though, because he began to stroke her more firmly, quickly, driving her forward, his gaze moving between her flushed face and her trembling thighs and the hyper-sensitised flesh between, fully exposed, willing, responsive, and then shuddering as orgasm rolled over her. Instinctively she brought her legs together, trying to trap and prolong the fluttering, the tiny earthquake within her, and trapping his hand, too, though his finger continued to stroke her with the tiniest of movements, until her body relaxed and her limbs fell loose and open.

"Beautiful," he breathed, and she opened her eyes a little, seeing only the nimbus of sunlight around his head. She closed her eyes against the light, but not before seeing how soft his mouth and his eyes were as he looked at her still.

He stroked her one more time, then withdrew his hand.

"Brave Nymphadora."

"Brave?" She looked at him, squinting a little, curious to know what he meant.

"To let me get so close, see you so clearly, give yourself into my hands."

She didn't ask if he was willing to give himself to her in the same way; she feared not, but wouldn't say so, in case she drove him to withdrawal. Instead she lifted a hand to run it firmly over the hard flesh she could see trapped and embraced in his clothing. He moved slightly against her, then moved out of her reach.

She was disappointed, but less so when he said, "I'd like to go on feeling like this, think about what having you might be like. If you will –"

She interrupted to assure him of his welcome. "Later, if you want, if you'd rather." She smiled up at him. "I know what it's like, wanting to cherish the feeling, knowing what's coming when I want it."

He bent his head. "Later," he agreed, and moved to lie beside her, taking her loosely in his arms.

She moved closer, fitting herself against him. If he decided he wanted later to be soon, he should know he could have his own consummation, or fling himself off the edge with her, if he didn't want her to observe him as he had observed her, whenever he should seek it.

She felt him relaxing, and closed her eyes again, feeling the sunlight warm on her eyelids, feeling his skin warm and silky against hers, sliding one hand down his back and then looping her arm around his shoulders.

She didn't know when ease became sleep.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

When she woke they were no longer lying embraced. He was lounging against the grassy bank, true, but he was fully dressed, and apparently engrossed in one of the goblins' reports.

Not so engrossed as not to see she had wakened, though.

"I cast a charm to keep the sun from burning you – your skin is very delicate."

"Thanks. I hope you did the same for yourself? Your skin'd take the sun even less easily than mine."

"Yes. You should dress, though."

"Back to work," she agreed.

She too settled into checking through yet another report, one he pushed at her. It proved to be the goblins' minutes of their meetings with Matthew Boulton. Their talks had mostly been at Soho House, though he had shown them his mint and its operations, let them see his die-sinkers engraving the dies with which coins were stamped, explaining the design innovations that prevented forgery and coin-clipping: the whole process of coin creation and production. No doubt it was easier to conceal the goblins' nature if they met in the privacy of his home, though if the goblins were carefully cloaked and hooded and gloved an onlooker might see only ugly, half-crippled children. She wondered if, in copying these accounts out for Kingsley's investigator, they had suppressed anything useful. Certainly the actual financial arrangements come to were not included, but that shouldn't make any difference to Severus.

Afterwards Severus asked her what she thought, and they spent some time analysing the accounts of the series of meetings, and later meetings, trying to identify possible omissions. It was interesting that the presence of his daughter at several of those private meetings had been recorded. There was no mention of his son. The goblins probably preferred not to be exposed to a Squib, whereas a witch would have her own reasons for preserving their secrets. By the time of the first meeting, soon after Matthew built his mint at Soho, Anne would have been twenty, capable of understanding the need.

At half past five they packed up their papers and the coffee flask, Incendio'd the scraps from their picnic lunch, and brushed the grass off their clothing. Severus used Scourgify to remove certain grass stains from the back of Tonks's jeans and the knees of his trousers. He smiled at her as he did it, a faint smile that barely curved his lips, but definitely not his usual smirk. That reminder and promise of intimacy pleased her, but she didn't try to renew it. He needed to be able to trust her, even though she had every intention of continuing her courtship at odd moments, to assure him of her continuing interest. Little gifts and gestures, but no pressure for lovemaking at inappropriate times, that was what was needed.

They Apparated into the garden of Soho House, coming in behind the shelter of the hermitage, concealed from any Museum employees who might still be present. Careful checking, by eye and then by wand, showed they had the place to themselves.

Tonks enquired, "Do you want to Apparate into the building too, or charm the back door open? They will have alarms set, which might react to the door being opened without a security code or something."

"Apparate into Matthew's study, then. There won't be any records there, if they're all held at the Birmingham Reference Library, but I want to examine that room, and the other private rooms, in more detail than we could with the guide present."

They combed through everything in Matthew's study, searching physically as well as with magic, and found nothing but more examples of his Manufactory's work, a few more of his books, and oddments which appeared to belong to the caretakers or the Museum rather than the nearly two centuries dead master of the house. Severus even checked the walls for hidden compartments, finding nothing.

It was the same in Matthew's bedroom, and then in Anne's. Severus was scowling in irritation, by now. It was almost a relief to Tonks to see that their lunch idyll on the grass had not affected his temperament.

Tonks said suddenly, "She was a witch. There might be concealment charms, not just a physically concealed cupboard or shelf in the walls, or under the flooring – though you'd think the Muggles might have found anything like that during the restoration. Why don't we check for those?"

"Starting here," Severus agreed. "The papers and biography don't suggest she was deeply involved in her father's business, so she's not so likely to have set them on the study."

"Yes, and anything that identified her as a witch she'd need to conceal, if only from the servants."

"And her brother, probably."

Severus found a little compartment in the wall beside Anne's bed, but when he had coaxed it to open it proved to be empty except for a few old textbooks, most on Transfiguration. There was nothing special about them; Anne did not appear to have been the sort of student who wrote notes in her textbooks, unlike Severus. After a little hesitation he returned them, and renewed Anne's charm.

Then he found a floor support beam had been hollowed out. There was nothing in it, but it was the right size to hold a wand.

"Poor woman," Tonks muttered, feeling a sudden sympathy at Anne's need to conceal everything about herself that made her special, and different, and put her at risk.

"At least she could trust her father," Severus pointed out. "Many Muggleborns didn't have even that security." He went on, "You realise the chances of our finding anything significant are slight. She left this house when she was what, fifty? And moved to that house down the road – what was it?"

"Thornhill House, demolished nearly a hundred years ago," Tonks replied dryly. "We have to search, though. This is the one possible place to look that, going by those reports, the goblins didn't bother with. I suppose because they thought, with Matthew's business and personal papers having all been archived together, there'd be nothing here. They would have expected the Muggles to have gone over it thoroughly, too, when restoring it."

Tonks found the next cache. Without charms it would certainly have been found when Anne's room was stripped to the boards and repaired, plastered and painted and papered. It was similar to the textbooks' cupboard, but in the wall near the door to Anne's little sitting room. It contained a heap of slim, leather-bound books all of a similar size. Tonks took out the top one and examined it.

"Her diaries," she reported. "This one's dated 1809, on the first page, see?" She held it out to him.

Severus moved over to join her. "Why would she leave those? She took her wand, if not her schoolbooks."

Tonks leafed through it, while Severus picked up the next one down in the heap. "We should take these, and go through them. This one's dated 1808."

"One a year; a lot of reading," Tonks grimaced.

"So long as she dated the entries, we can start by looking up the dates the goblins met her father," Severus pointed out.

"Better than working through thirty years' reading – not that there's thirty of these." She did a quick count. "Maybe she spread herself more in later years, writing."

She fanned the pages, and found the diary was by no means full. She turned to the last entry. It was dated 1 September, 1809.

Slowly she read it aloud. "I shall not continue this diary. I cannot any longer bear to record what I think and feel and do; I do not want to be able to recall this wasteland without him, and Matt in charge of everything. I want to forget it all. My dearest father bade me write to him, and smiled as he said it, but it hurts too much. I'll write no more, but find something else to use up my time, until I shall have learned to live without him."

She looked up. Severus's face showed no sign of sharing the sympathy she felt for a bereaved woman, but he said, "She left them here. But she lived in this house for another nine years after his death, didn't she."

"Perhaps she found other activities of greater interest, when she recovered," Tonks suggested hopefully.

"And maybe she continued to mourn, however busy she made herself," Severus responded.

Tonks felt a twinge of fear, remembering how long he had mourned for Lily Potter and, as their afternoon proved, never found, probably never desired, another love. So why had he let her coax him to make love with her? Giving way to curiosity? Or was he at last able to move on, with his former master destroyed and Lily's son no longer in need of his protection? She hoped it was that.

"Let's look through them, then, and compare them with Nek's minutes," she proposed, moving to Anne's high, broad bed, kicking off her sandals and hopping up, taking the heap of diaries with her.

Severus joined her there, sitting upright on the edge of the bed, extracting that bundle of parchment from his satchel. They spent some time leafing through, checking Anne's diary entries not only for the dates of meetings, but for some days afterwards.

"We should read the relevant years complete, in case she has anything to say at another time."

Three years' worth. And maybe the years in between that had passed without meetings. Ah well. It was almost their last hope. If they found nothing here, Severus would need to examine the goblins' dies and machinery and processes, and persuade them to discuss their magic – a difficult prospect, even if they had come to the Ministry asking for help.

It was getting dark, and they were both using _Lumos_ to read Anne's neat but tiny writing, when Severus said tensely, "Listen!"

Tonks put down the 1787 diary and sat up, cross-legged.

"I trust I have done the right thing. I can't tell Papa. He might be embarrassed, but he built the Mint, which has cost a great deal, and he still has no government contract to produce coins, only tokens for mills and mines, in place of real money. And that wretched French designer still hasn't produced the coin designs he promised Papa last year! So much money is going into Mr Watts' experiments with the rotative engine, and Mr Murdoch is urging him to use high-pressure steam in the engines instead of the low pressure. I feel sure that that, at least, is an expense Papa will not be put to, as neither he nor Mr Watt trust the safety of an engine run on high-pressure steam.

"Papa needs a good continuing income, or a large payment such as these goblin gentlemen promise. I must make sure that the designs and dies Papa has given them to copy and then transform are as clear and fine as possible, even though he has been unwilling in the past for me to transfigure the master dies he uses for medals and the like. These goblins plan to turn out a good many coins, it seems, of gold, and silver, and bronze. (I wonder why they do that? Our small coins are copper.) It is vital that the dies be long lasting. I know I can ensure their lasting for at least Papa's lifetime, so that the goblins will keep the bargains they have made with him."

He looked up. "She doesn’t say exactly what she did, wretched woman, and there's no more here, though we must read on, check out all the diaries."

Tonks repeated, " _At least Papa's lifetime_. Do you think her magic lasted almost two hundred years, when she herself outlived her father only by twenty?"

Severus's mouth tightened. He closed the diary he held, set it down, and imperatively snapped his fingers for the one she had been working through. She gave it up without complaint. Only when he had bound the volumes in two bundles with string from his satchel and miniaturised the bundles, did he speak.

"If she had been as powerful a witch as that," he said deliberately, "her name would be known throughout the wizarding world in Britain, at least. I don't believe it did last. Which means the goblins have given us a problem to which they already have the answer. Get up, Nymphadora!"

She had been staring at him, but jumped off the bed, put on her sandals and her backpack, and hastily straightened the bedspread with a flick of her wand.

"We're going back to the Ministry now, and if Kingsley isn't there I'll summon him. This won't wait, and we should not stay here. I don't care for the goblins to discover that we guess what they've done."

"But what are they doing? Apart from playing silly buggers?"

"That's not a thing goblins do," he said grimly. "They want something from us, and if it's not help with a magical problem, it's politics."

"Not another bloody Goblin Rebellion!" Tonks exclaimed, her mind going back to Professor Binns' terrible lectures, the best soporific in the world. The idea of a rebellion no longer seemed funny as it had in her schooldays.

"They told Kingsley the wizarding coinage would vanish, in effect, in ten years or so. Why give us notice, if it's rebellion they're brewing?"

He grabbed her hand. "Side-along!" he ordered, then snapped, "The Ministry foyer!"

Tonks managed not to fall over when they landed in the marble hall beside the guard's desk.

The young man on duty widened his eyes at their Muggle clothing, but checked their wands and Tonks's Auror badge, and handed back the wands.

It turned out that Kingsley had gone home, but it only took a Floo call to bring him back.

He settled at his desk, saying, "This isn't just news, is it."

"Possibly bad news. I cannot prove it –yet, and you may wish to set someone else to do that – but I believe the goblins presented you with a false problem, a threat, as a way of manipulating you, and the wizarding world."

Kingsley said mildly, "I would have thought that economic chaos inside ten years – earlier if word of their problem gets out – was sufficient threat to gain my, and our, cooperation. So, where is the falsity?"

"I believe that the – demolition, if you will – of our coinage happened nearly two hundred years ago, on the death of the man who provided them with the processes they've used all this time. And that they worked out then how to fix it, and can maintain it now if the problem recurs. Which I suspect it won't, unless they undo their repair magic."

"So it's a big enough lever to move our world – if they refuse to fix it this time." Kingsley sighed. "I thought I'd indicated to them clearly enough that I believed we should renegotiate the goblins' status in the wizarding world, to redress some, at least, of their grievances." He smiled faintly. "They hold a grudge even better than you do, Severus, so I imagine they'll continue to have grievances."

Severus shrugged. "They want you at a disadvantage, rather than negotiating from strength."

"Details of this deceit," Kingsley demanded, all Minister for Magic now.

"Matthew Boulton's daughter was a witch, concerned for his financial position, and transfigured the materials he gave them – specifically, the coin dies – to ensure they would last far longer than would be natural, continuing to produce high quality coins, so that the payments the goblins promised would also continue."

Severus produced the diaries and opened the crucial one.

Tonks listened to the subsequent discussion, and their speculation on what transfiguration charms Anne might have used.

"At least it wasn't a child's wild magic she employed," Severus said. "We have some chance of identifying her methods, if the goblins cooperate with _that_ investigation, for which neither of us hold out much hope."

Later Kingsley asked, "When in 1809 did the fellow die?"

"August."

"Umm. And it was in 1811 that Grogan Stump managed to push through revised definitions of 'being' and 'beast'. I wonder if that was a coincidence? Maybe the goblins cocked up their negotiations, the first time around – that decision deprived them of having trolls, which they can control, classified as beings."

He looked thoughtful for a moment. "We read nothing of financial crisis in the later part of 1809, but it would be to everyone's advantage to keep the threat secret: the goblins were not so firmly established as the wizarding world's sole bankers then. Well, that may not matter, though I'll have the Wizengamot records searched, and the Minister's closed archives. I'll also have all these diaries checked, in case Anne Boulton said anything more specific about what she did, and whether she laid any other spells on her father's work. There's certainly no need for either you or Tonks to waste your time reading so much, with such a slight chance of a return."

At last Kingsley said, "I believe I can deal with blackmail more easily than with a genuine magical disaster. I will, however, set Department of Mysteries staff onto trying to find our own solution to the problem."

Severus straightened, scowling a little, and Tonks too felt some indignation that he was not thought good enough to pursue this matter.

Kingsley shook his head. "You _could_ do it, Severus, as well as any of them, I believe, but I want you for other things. You have work of your own, and you don't actually wish to work for the Ministry. It suits both you and me for you to have the status of special investigator on call. What I want," he smiled as Severus relaxed slightly, "is to be able to set you on a problem, as a fresh mind, to find a way into it. Not necessarily to resolve it."

He grinned outright. "I certainly don't want to give you the opportunity to resign, if you get bored, just because you can."

Severus smirked, and Tonks thought he had had that option in mind all along. Yes, the silly bugger would do that, just to assert his freedom of choice. Now Kingsley had brought it into the open, perhaps Severus would be content to be called in occasionally and have his curiosity fired and his self-esteem flattered, and do a good job without too much drama.

"What I'd like you to do now," Kingsley went on, "is to go back to Birmingham and spend the night at your pub. Go to the Gringotts branch tomorrow just as you did this morning. You've had a look at Soho house – if they ask – and found nothing of interest, any more than they did. (Yes, there's nothing in their notes about investigating it, but they may have done. Though obviously, if they did, they never found Anne's diaries.) Fairly early in the morning I'll send you an owl, asking if you've finished poking about, and you'll reply grumpily, and I'll tell you to get yourselves back to London and get down to work. You'll tell the bank manager you've been recalled, check out of wherever you're staying, and get back here."

Severus nodded.

"And when you do, you'll both be careful, if you please, not to act in a way that either suggests you know what they're up to," Severus rolled his eyes, "or exposes you to any danger. I'd like Tonks to stick close to you. Can you work here, for a while? Rather than at home?"

"I suppose so." Severus sounded reluctant. "I can't brew, here. But I can get on with some reading I have in hand, and some ideas development. Very well, Kingsley. For a while, at least."

"Good. Then, thank you, Severus. And you, Tonks. I'll see you both tomorrow."

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Tonks said, "I'm not so keen on going back to Birmingham tonight, despite what Kingsley said. I don't know if the goblins are spying on us, or how well they could do so if they wanted to. Would you know what they can do in that line?"

Severus shook his head.

"So I'm not sure what to guard against. But since Kingsley wants to be sure you're not bothered, we could use the overnight rooms here –"

She waited for Severus to shake his head decisively, then went on, "Or you could stay with me at Mum's; I have my own little bit of the house, and if anyone's looking for you – well, they wouldn't look there first. It's not so long that I moved out of the flat."

There was a risk in referring to Remus, even as indirectly as that, but she did want him to know she wasn't asking him to share space, let alone a bed, with her soon-to-be ex-husband.

"We could pick up our baggage from the Cup –"

"No; tomorrow will do for that," Severus said. "It's no business of the goblins' where we sleep, and if they find out where we did, they can think of a motive for it." He allowed his lip to twitch into something like a catch-it-before-it's-gone smile. "Much safer," he finished, straight-faced again.

Cunning. But he wanted to share her bed. That was good. He wasn't trying to hide that he wanted her, which was almost as good.

Now with any luck, she could get him into her bedroom without alerting her mother.

That achieved, she was careful to lock the door with several charms and to cast both Imperturbable and _Silencio_.

Severus looked around her bedroom, noting the door to her own bathroom. Thank goodness she'd had a tidiness fit a few days ago.

"I think I shall enjoy being courted," he said softly.

He pulled her into his arms, bending his head to kiss her, pulling her between his spread legs. There wasn't much softness there; more like determination, but he used all his recently acquired knowledge of what she liked and what he liked, and Tonks returned his kisses with enthusiasm.

Some time later they were tugging each other's clothing off again, but Severus pulled back with an impatient growl and used his wand to banish everything into a heap on her dressing stool. Then he stripped the covers back from her bed.

After that, though, he put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her face. She met his eyes, hoping this wasn't going to be Legilimency.

"You're quite sure? You don't just want to go on exchanging chocolates and kisses?"

"We could if you'd rather," she answered breathlessly, "but I'd rather have _you_."

That seemed to be reassurance enough.

He came back to kissing her, and she tangled her hands in his hair and held him to her fiercely, while the pressure of his body against hers slowly moved her back to the wall. His hands slid down her back and cupped her buttocks, fingers digging in for a moment as if exploring the soft flesh, then he lifted her. She promptly hooked first one leg then the other around his hips, crossing her ankles. It certainly made standing kisses easier, so long as neither of them lost their grip.

Tonks turned her head, biting at his jaw, licking the stubble showing there, then licked his ear. When his sharp inhalation of breath showed how sensitive that was, she did it again, then took it between her teeth and nibbled, alternating soft bites with licks. He bucked against her, his cock hard against her belly, then began rubbing himself against her. It occurred to her that he could come that way, and might do so quite soon, lacking practice.

She stuck her tongue in his earlobe and licked it thoroughly before whispering against the wet flesh, "Bed. Much easier. No falling over."

He shivered, and muttered, "Bed. Yes, all right."

After a long moment of continuing to grind himself against her he backed away from the wall and got them over to the bed.

He laid her down and spread her thighs so he could kneel between. She reached out to take him in her hands, to fondle the length of him standing hard against his body, feeling it quiver, then wiped the pearls of fluid from the tip and brought them to her lips, licking them off her fingers.

He sagged, and closed his eyes, then said, "Trying to kill me? Hold still just a minute, Nymphadora!"

Then he slid forward, over her, and let her take him in her hands and guide him home, so that he was poised just inside her entrance. He closed his eyes again for a moment, tightly, breathing hard. She imagined she could hear him reciting, "Abyssinian shrivelfig, agrimony, alihotsy, asphodel, bubotuber..."

His breathing steadied, his eyes opened, and he slid into her like a fish through water.

It was Tonks's turn to catch her breath. That felt marvellous. Now, if he would just...

Then he began to move, and she lifted her hips to meet him, put her hands behind his arse to hold him as close as possible, then wrapped her legs around him again, pressing in with her heels every time he thrust.

"Yes, Severus," she hissed.

He had his lower lip between his ragged teeth, biting hard enough to cut the skin, so she reached up to push her fingers into his mouth. He bit on them for a moment, then drew back, brushed her hand aside with a blind swipe of his head, and fastened his teeth in her shoulder. Her pulse stuttered with excitement. No gentleness now, nor gentlemanliness, either.

Then he began to move harder, faster, driving as deep as he could, his whole body pressing hard against hers. He was heavy, it meant she couldn't move much, but she didn’t care, as the skin of his chest stroked her nipples and the thicker trail of his lower body hair rubbed against her belly, and he was at just the right angle, and she was nearly there ... and arrived at her destination, crying out, head thrown back, incoherent, breathless, blood pounding suffocatingly, and ripples of liquid gold running through her entire body from the centre where he was.

He followed her almost silently, with a last few thrusts, and collapsed onto her.

A minute later, while she was still trying to get her breath, he held her to him and moved them both onto their sides, still connected, still close, sweat pooling between them, but breath easing, overheated bodies beginning to cool, until he softened, sighed, and slipped out of her. He didn't move away, but he reached over her shoulder and snapped his fingers.

" _Tergeo_ ," he muttered, cleaning the sticky fluids off their bodies, then, "Scourgify," to get rid of the wet patch she could feel under her hip.

He'd summoned his wand, she realised.

She wriggled slightly, getting more comfortable, holding him against her, enjoying the warmth and the sense of mutual achievement. She tucked her head under his chin, and felt him run his fingers through her hair, teasing out individual locks.

"Brown curls," he murmured, sounding satisfied.

So he really liked her as she was, or liked to know she wasn't changing herself to please or entice him.

She licked his throat, then replied, "Chocolate, Severus?"

She felt rather than heard the brief laugh that shook him. "In the morning, Nymphadora, ask me again. Right now, I'm enjoying what I have."

So was she. So was she. And for now she felt secure, where she belonged, riding her broom easily through the upper air, in sunshine and peace and joy. With him. Where she hoped to be today, and tomorrow, and as long after that as he would stay. With his record, that ought to be for ever.

~~~ Endit ~~~

**Author's Note:**

> Written February 2008 for hp_springsmut, for karasu_hime. Thanks to my beta reader bethbethbeth, to my brother, who read the fic pre-beta, and to the mods for their patience, no doubt finger-tapping and head-desking, but they never shared that with me.
> 
> Doing the research for this was fun. It would have been more fun if I hadn't been in such a hurry, but at least I was able to build on some previous knowledge (gained during my wonderful time in Birmingham in July 2007), and now know more, which is always good. Anyone who really wants to know more, read on.
> 
> Soho House exists, and is well worth a visit, especially if you're interested in industrial archeology; they do good informative exhibitions in the attached building. I didn't make up the Briar Rose, or Guns and Briar Roses tap beer (but the pub didn't open until April 2000 – fail!).
> 
> Birmingham celebrated Matthew Boulton's bicentenary in 2009. Maybe someone will put up a decent memorial, or fund something useful in his name. He did enough for the place, from manufacturing to music. There is a fairly new gilt statue in Broad St of him with Watt (steam engine developer) and Murdoch (gas lighting inventor), and a rather odd but attractive set of memorial stones for members of the Lunar Society in the grounds of the Asda supermarket in Great Barr.
> 
> If you have ₤25, there's a modern biography of Anne Boulton, by Shena Mason, which you can buy at Soho House: _The Hardware Man's Daughter: Matthew Boulton and his 'Dear Girl'_ (2005). I didn't, and there's not much about Anne on the net, alas.
> 
> If you're interested, you could try these websites: http://www.theassayoffice.co.uk/matthew_boulton.html (there are other Matthew Boulton pages on the site; he started the Birmingham Assay Office), and http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/matthew-boulton/. Googling on his name, on Soho House, and on the Lunar Society will get you lots of info, and some useful contemporary pictures. (Me, obsessive?)
> 
> If you get hooked on Birmingham in the industrial revolution, you could look at this, which is a chapter in a book on 18th century improvements in coinage by an economist (don't run away: it's a fascinating time traveller's tour of industrial Birmingham in 1829, A Ramble 'Round Old Birmingham by George Selgin): http://www.terry.uga.edu/~selgin/documents/Ramble.pdf. For a look at the Jewellery Quarter today, follow the walk outlined over several pages on this site (with lots of historical information and anecdotes, photos, maps etc): http://jquarter.members.beeb.net.
> 
> And finally, if you're really into monetary theory and history of this period, take a look at Selgin's proposal for the book as a whole: http://www.tedweinstein.com/files/Good_Money_Proposal.pdf – which is, by its nature, advertising/proselytisation, but which includes a couple of interesting sample chapters. (Not an economist, me.)


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